Report: Got money? Tech may make life more complicated

AdAge has a monthly column called Affluency that focuses on the demographics and buying habits of the well-to-do. It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that those with bucks to burn are going to spend some of it on technology. Butthis month’s installment has an interesting twist: Those who have adopted cutting-edge consumer technology say it may have made their lives more complex.

Market research firm Ipsos Mendelsohn surveyed households where the annual income was over $100,000, asking them how their lives had most changed in the past 10 years. The No. 1 response: The moneyed have become “technology infused.”

From the column:

The most dramatic changes have been seen in the adoption of “new” media platforms. Smartphones barely qualify as “new media” any more, having gone decidedly mainstream — 52% of the Affluents own them, rising to 92% if we broaden the scope to those with any kind of wireless or cellular phone.

The newest of the new — tablets and e-readers — are seeing explosive growth among the Affluents (who, of course, are not only enthusiastic about media and technology, but also have the discretionary income to buy such devices). Our monthly Mendelsohn Affluent Barometer survey shows that e-reader ownership doubled between September 2010 and April 2011 from 12% to 23%. Tablet growth has been just as dramatic, and it is poised to continue. Consider that 14% of Affluents now have a tablet, and an additional 15% plan to buy one in the next 12 months. Put another way, nearly one-third of the Affluents may own tablets within the next 12 months.

But if that was the first choice on the list of how things have changed, the next top selections show that all this gadgetry hasn’t smoothed life’s road.

But technology, seemingly like everything else from the last decade, is viewed by the Affluents as something of a mixed blessing. When we asked how their lives had changed over the past decade, “infused with technology” was the most widely cited answer. But equally telling are the phrases coming next on the list — “more complicated,” “more stressful” and “focused on finding ways to do more with less.” In contrast, fewer than half said their lives had become “more fun” or “easier.”

Based on this column, written by Ipsos Mendelsohn executives Bob Shullman and Stephen Kraus, it’s hard to tell that the adopted tech itself has caused life to be more complicated, but the piece clearly ties that together. The authors note that new gadget bring new requirements. Each is “another device to carry, manage, troubleshoot and potentially pay monthly charges for.”

And it’s another device to be accounted for in the complex calculus of choosing a media platform for a particular task or occasion (e.g., a smartphone for calls and texting, a tablet for app usage, a print magazine to read on the train, a laptop for document creation and internet use).

There’s a hashtag frequently used in Twitter for issues that clearly are the domain of those who are well off: #firstworldproblems. This definitely qualifies.

How about you? If you’ve adopted cutting-edge consumer technology, has it made your life simpler or more complex?